


Im/mortality

by viiemzee



Series: The Karnstein Backstory [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Flashbacks, Immortality, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2542685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viiemzee/pseuds/viiemzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What's bothering you?"<br/>"I miss my friends."<br/>"OK..."<br/>"I made a lot of friends in my centuries around, buttercup..."</p><p>Carmilla tells Laura about a few of the people she's met in her long years of life, the people she misses the most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Im/mortality

Laura hadn’t expected to find Carmilla in a mood that wasn’t ‘brooding’. Sure, she had been particularly difficult lately, especially as things got more difficult with her Mother and all that, but to walk into their room and to find her staring at the wall, back to the rest of the room, shoulders shaking slightly, was a new thing for Laura.

“Uh...Carmilla?”

The vampire froze and tilted her head slightly to the right, giving Laura a small view of her face – the part of it that wasn’t covered in her hair, anyway – and sniffed.

“What?”

“I thought you said vampires didn’t cry,” Laura said softly, lightly, trying to turn the other girl’s mood around, but Carmilla didn’t respond, merely went back to looking at the wall.

“What’s bothering you?” Laura asked, making her voice as soft as possible, inching to put a hand on Carmilla’s shoulder in the hope that she might actually turn to look at her, but Carmilla just abruptly got off the bed and moved to the window, placing a hand against the cool glass and clenching her fingers into a claw-like figure, dragging her finger tips across the glass.

“I miss my friends.”

“OK...” Laura uttered after a long pause, moving to the computer chair and making herself comfortable, hoping that Carmilla would elaborate, give her a bit more of her back story, and she didn’t disappoint. Before long, Carmilla had sat down at the window sill and swallowed once, twice, thrice, before wiping a hand over her eyes as if trying to conjure distant memories.

“I made a lot of friends in my centuries around, buttercup...”

* * *

**London, 1814**

“George!” she giggled as the man poured her another drink, giving her the classic wink and smirk he had perfected, the one thing he was most known for. “You have _got_ to stop indulging me like this! Whatever will Ms Caroline Lamb think of you spending so much time with me?!”

“Ah, my dear Mircalla, it is not Caroline you should be worrying about,” the poet said, sitting down on the sofa beside his friend and draping a long hand over the edge of it, drinking from his own glass. “Augusta, on the other hand...”

“Your dear sister is quite the charmer, just like you, George,” she grinned, and he rolled his eyes, bringing his bad leg up onto the nearest pouf and groaning.

“She is a wonder, but also a pain.”

“Much like you, I warrant,” she said as she sipped from her glass, and he laughed looking over at her and shaking his head slightly.

“My dear Mircalla, if only you weren’t so inclined to the fairer sex, I would long have given up all these women.”

“George, you say this to me every time. Every time I will say no,” she said, inching slowly away from him, and his face fell as she did. He looked dejectedly at his drink, swirling it around with lazy, jerky wrist movements.

“No use pursuing somebody who will never have me,” he mumbled, bringing the drink up to his lips and reaching to the small parlour table for the pen and paper he always kept on it. “But, I will try and immortalize your beauty, at the very least.”

“George...”

“Mircalla, let me!” he said, and she sat back, watching as her dear friend read out the words he wrote to her.

“She walks in beauty, like the night...”

“One day the entire world will know your name, George Gordon Byron,” she said, watching with growing curiosity as he wrote and slowly recited.

“That’s the plan, my dear friend.”

* * *

**Rome, 1821**

“Miss?”

She looked over at the man who had approached her in the ballroom, and raised an incredulous eyebrow, holding out a gloved hand.

“Yes?”

He took her hand, kissing her fingers lightly, and looking her right in the eye. “How fortunate of me to run into you, Miss Karnstein.”

“I’m sorry, have we been previously acquainted?” She tried to keep her cool, she hated being approached by strangers like this.

“How terrible of me,” he said, running a hand through lacklustre hair, and she saw the worry etched in the wrinkles in his forehead, the sadness in the lines on his cheeks, before they faded out. “My name is Charles Brown, we have a mutual friend.”

She looked at him for a long time before something in her mind clicked, and her face brightened as she grabbed a hold of the man’s shoulder, grinning widely.

“Is Mister Keats anywhere near?”

“Madam, I have terrible news,” Charles answered, and she felt the earth shift beneath her feet.

“Oh, dear.”

“His sickness overcame him a few nights ago. He has been buried here, in Rome.” Mister Brown grew silent as her hand slowly lowered from his shoulder, down limply to her side. “I am so terribly sorry, Miss Karnstein. I know how close you both were, you exchanged letters frequently, you encouraged his engagement to Miss Brawn-”

“The poor girl,” was all she could mutter as she sat down and stared at the floor, the price of her immortality hitting her like a brick to the neck.

* * *

**England, 1867**

“My, my, Dante,” she remarked as she walked into his studio, raising an eyebrow at the mess around her and carefully stepping over the overturned, empty pots of oils. “You’ve been busy!”

He looked up from his painting, almost finished, she could tell, and wiped a hand over his chin, creating a small smudge of red.

“Hello, my dear friend!” he greeted, but that was it – he was back to staring at his painting within seconds. She raised an eyebrow and positioned herself next to him, hitching up her skirt slightly to keep it away from the dirt on the floor.

“Your latest masterpiece?”

“Mm...” he mumbled, “Miss Fanny was a wonderful model.”

“It’s turned out nicely,” she nodded, touching his arm lightly. “I’m sorry it’s been so long since I visited-”

“Perfectly fine, Carmilla, dear,” he shut her off, waving a hand and giving a half-shrug. “I have been...coping, as you can see.”

“Yes, it has been five years. One would think you’d already be bedding someone new.”

He looked over at her and took his turn to raise an incredulous eyebrow at her. “Would you so quickly forget the love of your life, wherever he may be?”

She didn’t have the strength to correct him, merely pursed her lips and continued to admire the painting.

“What is it called?”

“Lady Lilith.”

* * *

**Cuba, sometime in the 1940s**

“The war has had a heavy toll on us all, they say. The War has ruined everything, they say. Ah, fuck the war! I’m tired of hearing about it!”

“You lived through a war, Ernest, I’m sure I can understand why,” she murmured, fanning herself in the heat and watching her friend light a cigar and jam it into his mouth, staring out over their so-called garden. “How is Mary?”

“Well, thank you,” he answered automatically, looking over at her suddenly with a sad look in his eyes. “I don’t know why I just said that.”

“It’s perfectly fine, friend,” she said, still fanning herself.

“What brings you to Cuba, Mircalla?”

“Boredom, mostly.”

“Ah, indeed. Did your native European soil become too much for you?”

“You could say that,” she said, and he felt that there might be something she was leaving out, but he said nothing, and she knew that he never would.

“Any new works of literature planned, friend?”

“Possibly,” he said, puffing away at his cigar, and she smiled at him, reaching for the glass of water he had already poured her on her arrival. “I have a vague idea. Something about a man and his relationship with the sea. Very Coleridge, if I may say so.”

“How is fame treating you?”

“Fame is boring,” he mumbled around a mouthful of smoke, and she smiled at him, nodding.

“Indeed, it can be.”

* * *

**Somewhere in the Hollywood area, 1953**

“Sofia! Sofia, over here!”

The actress turned around, smiling at the woman waving at her, and quickly wove her way through the throng of admirers and other famous people to stand by her friend, quickly giving her a peck on both cheeks.

“ _Ma, Carmilla, come stai?_ ”

She was pretty sure she heard William scoff at the fact that he couldn’t understand this woman, but she just grabbed  her friend’s hands and held them at chest level.

“ _Bene, amica mia_.”

The actress grinned and gestured to the crowd, asking in speedy Italian if she and her brother and mother had enjoyed the film, and Carmilla nodded, explaining that yes, they really had. She looked over at her Mother and William, who were having their own conversation, probably about what they would do once they returned to Styria, but for now she chose to ignore it. Looping her arm into the other woman’s, she gestured to a balcony close by.

“This after party is a tad crowded,” she said in Italian, “What say we find a place to sit and talk quietly, friend?”

Sofia Loren nodded and smiled down at her friend. “ _Si, benne_.”

* * *

“Wait, wait, you’re friends with Sofia Loren?!”

“Was friends, Laura,” Carmilla sighed, bringing her knees up to her chin on her bed (she had moved somewhere between telling Laura about sitting in a lecture given by Tolkien and the Italian film star encounter) and looking at the bed sheets. “I can’t see her now, she’s probably too old to even remember me anyway.”

“And the others, how did you...?”

“Chance encounters. I just liked the artist types, they were always the interesting ones. I stopped hanging around poets so much after John died though. He was...too young,” she sighed, and Laura moved onto the bed next to her, looping an arm around Carmilla’s shoulders, pulling her into her slightly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Carmilla sniffed, looking up to look at her roommate – her tiny roommate who she had decided she was going to protect for some reason or another – and breathed out heavily from her nose.

“Nobody ever said being immortal was all great.”


End file.
